The Hold Awarded Coastal Communities Fund Grant

‘The Hold – A Suffolk Archives Service for the 21st Century’ has been awarded a £414,763 grant through the Coastal Communities Fund, to deliver a comprehensive, year round heritage activity and events programme to encourage new audiences to visit Ipswich Waterfront.

‘The Hold’ will be a beautiful landmark building in an attractive setting, transforming an area of Ipswich Waterfront that was a brownfield site/car park. However, it is the ‘Heritage Activity and Events Programme’ delivered from within that will bring the new building to life and attract, grow and diversify visitors. It will turn ‘The Hold’ into something vibrant, which adds to the critical mass of regeneration at Ipswich Waterfront, and in providing an indoor, year-round attraction, significantly adds to the cultural tourism offer of Ipswich.

The delivery of the Heritage Activity and Events Programme is what the CCF grant supports. The plan has been shaped in response to research undertaken into what visitors wish to see ‘The Hold’ deliver – in terms of formal and informal learning opportunities, skills development, entertainment, events, and interactive/family activities.

The resulting plan proposes a fresh mix of fun events, training, digital activities and traditional ‘outreach’ activity. It will see The Hold attract more than 100 new students to the town per annum, adding to the learning resources of the locality, such as the Innovation Centre, University library, and Waterfront building, encouraging further investment and social improvement.

The CCF grant builds on existing support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership, Garfield-Weston Foundation, Wolfson Foundation, and many more. This broad spectrum of funding supports the delivery of similar activities across the whole of Suffolk, from 2018 onwards.